Groveland woman testifies about daughter's killing

Tuesday

Oct 2, 2018 at 3:26 PMOct 2, 2018 at 3:26 PM

TAVARES — Dezra Wheeler tugged at the tissue box on the witness stand, dabbed her eyes and talked about the horror that no parent should ever experience.

Wheeler took jurors back to June 23, 2016, when her daughter’s longtime boyfriend and father of their two children, Virgil E. Hyde III, came to her mobile home where she and her son, Billy, were watching the children.

Hyde was acting strangely, Wheeler said. He nodded his head toward the door, indicating that he wanted to talk to her but did not want the children to hear.

“He said she was hurt,” Wheeler said, referring to her daughter Bobbi Wheeler.

There were two homes on the 50-acre Groveland property: Wheeler’s mobile home and a 2,500-square-foot house where Bobbi and Hyde and the children lived.

Although the homes were only about 100 yards apart, Wheeler grabbed the keys to her van, because she has Lupus and has difficulty walking.

She said that once she reached the house, “I hollered for Bobbi a few times,” Wheeler said.

“She’s in the laundry room,” Hyde told her. “Well, she might not still be in the laundry room,” she replied.

“She’s in the laundry room,” he said.

She described walking into the room and what she saw.

“My baby girl,” she said, her voice dropping to a choked whisper. “She’s bent down on her knees, laying on her face,” she said.

“You couldn’t even tell it was her face. There was blood all over the place.”

Crime scene photos show her face down on a garbage bag.

“I just screamed and screamed, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ ”

She said she turned to look at Hyde standing behind her.

“I turned and he just had this smirk on his face. It was like, ‘I got you. I hurt you,’ ” she said.

Prosecutors played a 33-minute redacted tape of the 911 call.

Jurors also heard from Bobbi’s brother, Billy.

He was acquainted with Hyde almost from the beginning of his sister’s 12-year relationship with him. Wheeler, who lays tile, described Hyde as a “slacker” who almost never had a job, and told his sister, “You can do better.”

Once the children were born, however, she said she was never going to leave him.

“I couldn’t argue with that,” he said.

But there was friction, including a period of time when the Wheelers, the children and Hyde all lived under the same roof in Augusta, Georgia.

Hyde would stay in the bathroom for a half hour, and when he came out, he would leave crushed pill residue on the counter and a credit card that he had used to mash the opioid pills.

He was taking oxycontin, Dezra Wheeler testified.

In the final days leading up to the shooting, Bobbi told her mother that Hyde would not let her sleep, insisting that she stay up all night and watch a giant TV screen divided into about a dozen security camera views.

“Was there a time when he thought the Ku Klux Klan was having sex with turkeys in the turkey coop?” defense lawyer Greg Denard asked.

Wheeler chuckled. “I could see how he might think that,” she replied. The images were so fuzzy you were limited only by your imagination.

Defense attorneys Monday laid out their case Monday in opening statements, saying it was not Hyde’s imagination at play, but insanity.

Sheriff’s deputies also testified that before the shooting they responded to a call from Hyde that someone was in the attic and that drones were spying on him.

He also shot a pet Doberman pinscher in the family room a few days before he killed Bobbi.

Hyde is charged with second-degree murder.

“Our office reviewed the case and came to the conclusion that that was the appropriate charge based upon the facts and circumstances of the case,” said Walter Forgie, supervisor of the Lake County State Attorney’s Office.

One of the requirements of first-degree murder is premeditation.

Second-degree incorporates the notion of a crime of “a depraved mind.”

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